Batavia and a Shipwreck

Sunday. A day after the Eurovision song contest. A day after a premier league Saturday where some results didn't go my way. After all it is Sunday and ought to do something. But nowadays it's quite difficult to drag our kids to follow us where ever we wanted to go. Not one of them wants to come along. They all have their excuses. Understandably for our eldest who is in the middle of her GCSE, she needs to stay at home, and definitely we are not disturbing her. She got her first serious paper tomorrow - Maths. Her exam started last week - Dutch oral and listening. So without the kids, me and missus went on our way.

We went to Lelystad to check out this factory outlet, the last time we were there was over 2 years ago. It has expanded and almost changed completely. The outlet is known as Batavia Stad, By late afternoon, the place was quite full, the rainy weather didn't perturb people from crowding the place.

The name Batavia reminded me of the old name of Jakarta. Looking at Wiki the Dutch built a fort in the year 1619 at where Jakarta is now and called it Batavia. This fort was the headquarter of the Dutch East India Company and became a colony of the Netherlands. The fort was built to repulse firstly the English who are also busy trying to expand their own colonies, and secondly the natives who wanted to oust the foreign powers. I find it really incredible to know that Jakarta as it is now a big city was founded by European only 400 years ago and yet many European and Arab cities are more than a thousand or two thousands years old. It shows how our Nusantara is such a young civilisation and was really way behind compare to the rest of the world then.

Back to subject Batavia, the word Batavia is said to come from an ancient name of a region in Holland. I was half guessing may be this is the region and that's why they called it Batavia Stad. May be.... But then close by next to the outlet there stands a replica ship called Batavia. Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company and was built in Amsterdam in 1628. The ship however was shipwrecked on her maiden voyage (sounds like Titanic! but no Leonardo de Caprio and Kate Winslet equivalent though). The ship looks quite huge and beautifully crafted. I was imagining what would it be like in the 17th Century when the Europeans in such ships came along to our coast, it must have been a very intimidating experience for our people then, this kind of ship carries 24 cast-iron cannons. No wonder it was so easy for our land to be lost or colonised.